RACE DID NOT MEAN A THING

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31167, 17 September 1966, Page 4

RACE DID NOT MEAN A THING

The Past That Would Not Die. By Walter Lord. Hamish Hamilton. 275 PP On the afternoon of Sunday. ' September 30, 1962. James Meredith arrived at the University of the Mississippi. He ■ was armed with 60 hours of academic credits, a Supreme Court order and several hundred federal marshals. Before his enrolment the . next morning, the university was to be the scene of a riot which President Kennedy described as “the worst thing I’ve seen in 45 years.” From seven in the evening until after two in the morning federal marshals withstood a barrage of bricks, bottles, bullets and motor vehicles from male rioters, most of whom had poured 1 into the area for the occasion, and a flow of obscenity from the sheltered Southern belles that would have embarrassed a barracksroom. By the time the troops arrived to save the situation and clear the campus two bystanders had been killed and 160 marshals injured, 28 of them shot. It was quite a night. Predictably, a local jury found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of any rioters who were arrested, although the sea of rubble and the burntout cars on the battle ground next morning suggested that the rest of the nation had some basis for its concern. )' Walter Lord has written); an excellent account of the not and the lengthy negotia-;; tions which preceded it. In ' spite of the dust jacket this ) is not a big book about the : Negro movement and the ’ Mississippi, its past and its present situation. The sketchy historical background and? superficial view of future? prospects give the impression? of being tacked on, but the story of how a single Negro student was enrolled at the \:

University of Mississippi is, once started, impossible to put down. Not that this university was academically remarkable. It had certainly come a long way from the time when the librarians job had been turned over to the janitor and the head of the philosophy department had been a political crony of the late Senator Bilbo, but it remained a pleasantly social headquarters, a club where the white elite could devote themselves to the fortunes of the football team, the activities of the innumerable fraternities and sororities and the launching of a seemingly endless line of beauty queens. The University of Mississippi also offered the chance of a good education for those really interested. For a man like Meredith who felt that segregation was something you could not run away from, something that had to be faced, “Ole Miss” was undoubtedly the place to go. It was the best university in the State, it was the gateway to everything that mattered in the Mississippi and it had sympathetic scholars on the campus like history professor James Silver. It was just unfortunate that Meredith was a Negro. There is much in the record of the attempts to keep Meredith out of the university that it is wryly amusing. The unfortunate university administrators provided the main (comic relief. In a State where segregation in the schools and colleges was a plain fact known to everyone, the Registrar swore “emphatically and unequivocally” that Meredith's race and colour had nothing to do with the refusal to accept him as a student. The Registrar assured the court .that he was “shocked, surprised and disappointed” that Meredith should have “so rashly and unjustifiably” con-

,'eluded that he had been re- ! fused admission because he was a Negro. The Judge re-] sponsible for dispensing federal justice, a Mississippian, accepted this assurance. At a later hearing before the same Judge, a long stream of witnesses including the Vice Chancellor and Dean of Student Personnel testified to ' the fact that the University] ' was not segregated and that . race did not mean a thing at ('“Ole Miss.” Again the court ‘ gravely accepted testimony • which nobod}' believed for a ■ moment. In the face of this s ] elaborate charade, the Fifth i •]Circuit Court of Appeal’s find-, ' ing that Meredith had been excluded solely because he • was a Negro showed a devoj'tion to fact that was almost ! indecent. i It Is an amazing story with l a wonderful cast of charac- ;] tiers. There were James Mere- , dith who did what he felt J had to be done although it - was likely to be the death I of him: Duncan Gray, the ■ Episcopalian minister, who linever gave up his attempts II to persuade rioters to drop I their bricks and bottles: .(John Doar, Justice department attorney, who knew the .importance of persistence i and provided the memorable statement of the account: . “You’ve just got to keep going back”: General Walker j who hopefully fanned the flames of violence in the belief that he was fighting '] Communism: and Governor ]]Ross Barnett, a well-meaning : | man, who was unable to control the forces of lawlessness - ] that he helped to set in ’ i motion. 1 One of the most interest- ’ ing of the characters re- ! ceives only the slightest mention. That is William Sim•Jmons, professional segregationist, Citizens’ Council ■] leader and reputedly the man who piped the tune to which i Governor Barnett danced. It -jis almost incredible that such

a central figure in the drama should have been allowed to remain so far in the background. Apparently William Simmons and the Citizens’ Council still have the power to conceal any clear knowledge of their part in the incident. The men who sent out the calls for volunteers to come to the university campus to fight- the federals and who where determined to surround Meredith’s enrolment with such disorder that troops would have to be used, remain unidentified. The author alleges that the rioting at “Ole Miss” was the result of two mistakes. First, Governor Ross Barnett underestimated the Kennedys’ determination. It was impressive to see the way in which the social and commercial aristocracy of Mississippi changed direction when they belatedly realised that the President and his brother really meant what they said. Second, Robert Kennedy under-estimated the inflamed state of opinion in the Mississippi and erred when he sent civilian marshals rather than troops in the first instance. The Mississippi is a backward area within the borders of one of the most developed nations of the world. Increasingly it is being caught up in the revolutionary social changes that will eventually convert the region into an urban and industrial society. In “The Past that Would not Die,” Walter Lord has decribed a particularly significant incident in the Mississippi decision to abandon official defiance as a weapon against federal authority and to begin the long road back to rejoin the nation as a whole.